Dive Brief:

• Construction employment in the U.S. fell 30% from its peak in 2006 to its bottom in early 2011, and it is nowhere near back yet.
• Total U.S. jobs may get back to their pre-recession level by the middle of next year, given the 200,000-jobs-per-month average established this year, but right now, construction has gained back only a fifth of the 2,041,000 jobs that went away.
• The painfully slow recovery is a drag on the national economy, too, with construction contributing 6% of GDP compared with the 9.4% it made up before the recession.

Dive Insight:

This recession has been markedly more painful for the construction industry than any previous ones in the 20th century. In three drawbacks since 1960, the industry never lost more than 18% of its jobs, and it had fully recovered in less than the seven years that have gone by since the bottom came this time. It seems like an obvious answer is to put people to work doing infrastructure and education construction that's needed, but that apparently is not obvious enough in this political climate.